Posted in Whathaveyou on December 13th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Something you might not get to see every day here in heavy psych rockers Blasting Rod making the voyage from their home in Nagoya, Japan, to play their first show on North American soil this coming Jan. 6. The gig is set for the Redwood Bar & Grill, and the band will be joined by Vie Jester and Power Falcon on what’s sure to be a lifetime memory for Blasting Rod.
Understand, this isn’t a tour. They’re crossing the Pacific Ocean to play a show in the US and proffer their weirdo lysergic experimentalism in a context entirely new. Will they ever come back? Who knows. But if you’re in Los Angeles or someplace adjacent, this is one to consider if you like being part of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. The ostensible occasion is the anniversary of their 2022 album, Of Wild Hazel (review here), but come on. This one is its own excuse for being.
Get there if you can get there. And it’s $10 at the door!
To wit:
Break those New Year’s resolutions Saturday, Jan. 6 at Redwood Bar & Grill in downtown Los Angeles when Blasting Rod makes its one and (so far) only North American live appearance.
In Fuzz We Trust presents Blasting Rod, Vie Jester, and Power Falcon.
Escape to L.A. with Blasting Rod at Redwood Bar & Grill on January 6 for the 1st anniversary of the North American LP release, Of Wild Hazel.
8pm Showtime $10 Cover at the door https://theredwoodbar.com 316 W. 2nd St. Los Angeles CA (213) 680-2600 Open 11am – 2am
Ain’t nuthin’ but a party, y’all!
Come hang with Blasting Rod at a chill bar with food and seating.
Blasting Rod is a get weird—stay weird tight but loose 3-piece based in Nagoya, Japan playing fuzzy grooves and slippery psychedelia.
Las ranuras borrosas y la psicodelia resbaladiza te transportarán a unas vacaciones para desconectarte de todo por un tiempo.
Posted in Questionnaire on October 6th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Sven Shah from Blasting Rod
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Both myself and probably others would most likely call it, “Messin’ around.”
I like to do something and see what happens. I tend to take the ball and run with it. Depending on who I’m working with, that can be an asset, or a deal breaker. As drummer and executive producer, Chihiro keeps me anchored, or at least within sight of the shoreline. I’m getting better at delegating, but my peers often tell me I’m working too hard and doing too much myself, while also ignoring conventions that remove any need for thinking. They aren’t wrong, but I don’t want to be in a Zappa position where I’m telling everyone what they have to, or not do I want to just accept convention as wrote.
I want my collaborators to have the freedom to make it their thing, too. I like a bit of chaos in the band. That way it can be thrilling for me and hopefully provides a sense of anticipation for those seeing us again. I think it’s important to be light on your feet so you can be open to changing course onto a path that you had not even initially put into the map. If the size of the group swells with people who are working to too tight a brief it becomes more difficult to make those sorts of spontaneous decisions.
On the other hand I do want to do some Blasting Rod Big Band shows with a horn section and additional percussionists on some songs. Having more people contributing sounds means that each person needs to contribute less, which might actually free me up to do some spontaneous conducting, or be more deliberate. A lot of musicians talk about having a sound in their head, but I tend to run with an actual sound. As George Harrison said, to allow it to be what it was always going to become. For me, personally, it’s important that “things” develop organically, but that involves understanding where the sounds are going.
Not sure how I arrived at this approach. It sounds more than a bit cliché to attribute it to the influence of Zen, but I have long been attracted to indeterminism, getting lost and finding my way home, both metaphorically and physically. Japanese animist beliefs tend to favor fate, but that is often counterbalanced by an impulse to micromanage and hint of real nature out of something. In order to maintain spontaneity and allow the hand of fate it’s place at the table we record together without a click and overdub layers by feel. Most, not all, of the guitar solos are improvised at the same time the bass and drums are recorded, and all of the bass improv. Variations in tempo are just as crucial to dynamics as fluctuations in volume.
Describe your first musical memory.
My Dad handing me a harmonica, or maybe it was a kazoo, then dropping the needle on a 45 of Love Me Do by The Beatles, and the two of us improvising on harmonica, or harmonica and kazoo, to that record is the earliest concrete memory of being aware of music. I may have been four?
Describe your best musical memory to date.
This is much more difficult. I’ll go with picking up a miracle ticket outside the box-office of a sold-out John McLaughlin trio concert in Montreal. Just happened to see he was playing, turned up ticketless and was immediately turned away. Some nearby had one extra, sold it at cost, and I got to see the concert, but alone. Having no idea what to expect, only knowing McLaughlin’s name from every single guitarist name-checking him in guitar mag interviews, at some point in the show I was levitating about 10 inches above my seat, and I was stone cold sober.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Every time I plug my gear in. I believe it’s gonna work, however some trial inevitably awaits. Great successes are often born from the darkest depths of despair.
This is a result of willingly bucking convention, and occasionally I have to cave in to conventional wisdom. An example of this being my belief that an LP with digital download coupon is superior to a CD. Not in Japan. I finally had to relent to the mounting claims of, “I don’t have space for a turntable and I don’t use my computer to listen to music.” Blasting Rod III and our upcoming solstice album are both being issued as limited edition CDs in Japan.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I have a pet theory, that I know in my heart is false, that bands start out as garage punk, but eventually become prog if they continue to challenge themselves. Bands that stay punk are admirable in their dedication. That intricacy can also eventually evolve into minimalism as the essence of the work becomes clearer. Although we are constantly challenging ourselves to do something, if even just slightly, different, we also make a conscious effort to keep the presentation casual, and tap into the energy of the moment. In other words, even though we have a progressive stance, perfection is overrated.
How do you define success?
Being able to do whatever want… No. No. I want a 12 cylinder Ferrari… but seriously, freedom is the ultimate success, and even the definition of that freedom is measured on a sliding scale. Having nothing is both freeing and constricting, for example, but which draws one’s focus?
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Saw a guy fall out of a moving train just after departing Howrah Station in Calcutta. Thankfully for me his landing was obscured by some shrubbery, but certainly it did not end well for him, regardless of my visual comfort. I guess in a way I’m glad I saw it. After that I was a lot more careful near open train doors.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Ha! It would be quite easy to get snarky about this and say a multi-platinum selling retirement piece, but actually we keep putting off the recording of this long-form song of the mystical Orient that was inspired in nearly equal parts by India, Thailand, and Japan, yet is still unable to escape rock’n’roll. Wow. I’m really propping up expectations with that description. Let’s just call it our “Jazz Odyssey”, a 15 minute raga rock number. We still have some other more concise songs in pocket, but rather than do a side-long Atom Heart Mother with a few other tunes on the opposite side, I’ve hit upon a much more excessive plan, which is to record both acoustic and electric versions with each taking up a full side. Now, if that isn’t decadent enough for you, I already have a six-hour album of solo guitar improv in the key of C# based on insufficiently studied Hindustani ragas each titled by a full 17 syllable haiku. This future Blasting Rod album idea is the height of commercialism by those standards.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
The art that is most appealing to me, at least, is art that provides a transportative experience out of normal expectations and experiences. That can be something fantastic like Dali’s Hallucinogenic Toreador, or just the opposite, something that may be so ordinary that it makes you completely rethink all of your notions of art simply by defying them entirely. At the very least it should move the mind, if not the heart as well.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I can’t wait to get away to some Pacific islands again, but a weedy gray Central Japanese beach will probably have to do for the foreseeable future. I’ll take it! Everything else on my calendar, that I’m looking forward to at least, is music related. The beach isn’t even on the calendar yet. Scratch that, Chihiro just informed me that we’re booked into a hotel in Okinawa for a late summer holiday…which, presumably, is why she’s been too busy to fill out her questionnaire
Day seven of a Quarterly Review is pretty rarefied air, by which I mean it doesn’t happen that often. And even with 100 records in the span of these two weeks, I’ll never ever ever ever claim to approach being comprehensive, but the point is take it as a sign of just how much is out there right now. If you find it overwhelming, me too.
But think about our wretched species. What’s our redeeming factor? Treatment resistant bacteria? War? Yelling for more war? Economic disparity? Abortion rights? Art. Art’s it. Art and nothing.
So at least there’s a lot of art.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
Trigona, Trigona
With independent label distribution in the UK, US, Australia and Europe, Trigona‘s Trigona is about as spread out geographically as sonically. The Queensland, AUS-based instrumental solo outfit of Rob Shiels — guitar, bass, synth, drum programming, effects, noise, etc. — released the Meridian tape earlier in 2022 on Echodelick and I’m honestly not sure if this six-song self-titled is supposed to count as a debut full-length or what, expanded as it is from Trigona‘s 2021 EP of the same name, albeit remastered with a new track sequence and the eight-minute “Via Egnatia” tagged onto the end of side B to mirror side A’s eight-minute finale, “Rosatom.” Sweet toned progressivism and semi-krautrock bass meditation pervades, debut or not, as Shiels touches on more terrestrial songwriting in “Monk” only after “Shita Ue” has offered its uptempo, almost poppy except not at all pop take on space rock outwardness, a mirror itself somewhat for album opener “Von Graf,” while second cut “Nudler” spreads proggy guitar figures over a sunshiny movement, letting “Rosatom” handle the wash-conjuring. There’s a slowdown at the finish of “Via Egnatia,” its effect lessened perhaps by the programmed drums, but Trigona‘s Trigona is so much more about atmosphere than heft it feels silly to even mention. Debut or not, it is striking.
Hells yeah J-psych. Nagoya-based three-piece Blasting Rod — guitarist/vocalist S. Shah (also electronics), bassist/guitarist Yoshihiro Yasui and drummer Chihiro (everybody also adds percussion) — already have a follow-up LP, Of Wild Hazel, on the way/streaming for the two-songer Mirror Moon Ascending, and that and some of their past work has aligned them with US-based Glory or Death Records, but if you’re looking to be introduced to their world of sometimes serene, sometimes madcap psychedelia, these two mono mixes by Eternal Elysium‘s Yukito Okazaki, with the drift and languid crash, far-back drums of “Mirror Moon Ascending” and the shaker-inclusive insistence of “Wheel Upon the Car of Dragonaut,” which turns its title into a multi-layered mantra, can be a decent place to start as a springboard into the band’s and S. Shah‘s sundry other projects. Their experimentalism doesn’t stop them from writing songs, at least not this time around, and it seems to drive aspects of what they do like mixing in mono in the first place, so there’s meta-screwing with form as well as get-weird-stay-weird heavy space rock push. After this, check out 2021’s III and then the new one. After that, you’re on your own. Good luck and have fun.
From Those Ashes, a double-guitar four-piece from Chicago, present four songs in Contagion of thrash-derived but ultimately mostly mid-tempo metal, vocalist/guitarist Aaron Pokoj (also production) leading the charge with Jose “Mop” Valles ripping solos for good measure and bassist Ryan Compton and drummer Omar “Pockets” Mombela holding together tight grooves amid the deathlier moments of the title-track. Pokoj‘s trades between harsh and clean vocals show a firm grasp of melody and arrangement, and though their lyrical perspective is disaffected until basically the last two lines of EP-closer “Light Breaks,” the aggression doesn’t necessarily trump craft, though “The Reset Button” moves through throwing elder-hardcore elbows and the first words shouted on opener “Devoid of Thought” are “fuck it.” Fair enough. The Iron Maiden-style opening of “Light Breaks” is a standout moment, though guitar antics aren’t by any means in short supply, but when From Those Ashes build their way into the song proper, the death-thrash onslaught is fervent right up to the end. And those last lines? “As light breaks through the shadow and gives way to life/Sustained emergence of the soul and the will to survive?” Brutally, righteously growled.
Rarely does music itself sound so stoned. Across six tracks of bassy, at least partially Dune-referential — the hand-drummed “Shai Hulud,” etc. — meditative heavy, the anonymous outfit Hashishian from somewhere, sometime, convey a languid, loosely Middle Eastern-informed, vibe-dense aural weedianism. And much to their credit, “Mountain of Smoke” seems to live up to its name. Less so, perhaps, “Let Us Reason,” which is drawn out in such a way that the moderation implied, maybe with desperation, is inhaled like so much pine-smelling vapor. “Shai Hulud” is the longest cut, mostly instrumental, and might be as far out as Hashishian go, but even the twisting feedback and lead notes at the beginning of closer “Nazareth” feel like a heavy-eyelidded march toward the riff-fill’d land, never mind the bass-led procession of the song itself, manifesting the ethic of opener “Onward” that seems to be the mentality of the 39-minute self-titled as a whole. It is molten in a way not much can claim to be, more patient than the most patient person you know, and seems to find way to make even the tolling bell of the penultimate “High Chief” a drone. Definitely post-Om in sound, Hashishian‘s Hashishian is a sprawl of sand waiting to engulf you. And to whoever is playing this bass, thank you.
Ohio-based industrialists Above & Below — primarily Plaguewielder‘s Bryce Seditz on vocals, guitar, synth, programming with Chrome Waves‘ Jeff Wilson adding bass, noise, production and a release through his Disorder Recordings imprint — make their debut with the seven tracks/27 minutes of Suffer Decay Alone, which digs into modern stylistic features like the weighted tonality of the guitar in “Isolate” and the screams on top, some The Downward Spiraling atmosphere given a boost in rhythm from the dense machine churn of Author & Punisher there and on the prior “Hope,” while “Rust” approaches danceable but for all that screaming. “Dead” sounds like something Gnaw might come up with, but the cold realization of craft in “Tear” feels like a signpost telling the project where it wants to head, and the same applies to the 3Teeth-style horror noise of “Covered.” I don’t know which impulse will win out, songwriting or destructive noise, and I’m not sure it needs to be one or the other, but Suffer Decay Alone sets out with a duly harsh mentality and sounds to match. If this is Rust Belt fuckall circa 2022, I’m on board.
Shades of Earthless‘ more meandering stretches pervade “Cosmic Awakening Pt. I – Forsaken Slumber,” the opener of Lord Elephant‘s Heavy Psych Sounds debut, Cosmic Awakening, and those are purposefully brushed away as “Cosmic Awakening Pt. II – First Radiation” brings on more straight-ahead instrumental shove. The Florence, Italy, trio issued the eight-track album independently in 2021 and their being on the label they are earns them a certain amount of trust before one even listens, but the vibe throughout the outing’s 43 minutes is a don’t-worry-we-know-what-we’re-doing blend of psychedelia and underlying tonal heft. Bass. Tone. Guitar. Tone. Drums. On point. There’s nothing overly fancy about it and there doesn’t need to be as “Raktabija” is a rush and a blast at once, “Covered in Earth’s Blood” crunches and builds and builds and crunches again and “Stellar Cloud” has enough low end to make you feel funny for staring. I wouldn’t put it past them to make friends with an organist at some point, but they’ve got everything they need for right now even without vocals, and the combination of weight and breadth is effectively conveyed from front to back, with closer “Secreteternal” executing a final slowdown until it just seems to come apart. Right on.
French double-guitar four-piece Dirty Shades released their debut EP in March 2020, so yeah, there goes that. Lift Off is the four-song follow-up short release, tagged as a ‘live session,’ and given the organic vibe of the performances, I’m inclined to believe it. Vocalist/guitarist Anouk Degrande leads the way as “Dazed” picks up in winding style from the more ethereal opening across the two-minute “Ignition,” her voice reminding in places of No Doubt-era Gwen Stefani, albeit in a much different context. Fellow guitarist Nathan Mimeau provides backing for the chorus, ditto bassist Martin Degrande, and drummer Mathurin Robart is charged with keeping the patterns together behind the various turns in volume and intensity through “Dazed” and the subsequent “Running for Your Life,” which is full, spaced and surprisingly heavy by the time its five minutes are done but is still somehow more about the trip getting there. And a shorter take on now-closer “Trainwreck” appeared on 2020’s Specific Impulse, but its added dreaminess serves it well. Jazzy in spots and showing the band still seeking their stylistic niche, Lift Off may well prove to be the foundation from which the band launches.
Best case scenario when a band revamps its lineup is that listeners get another killer band out of it. With that, bid hello to Venus Principle‘s debut album, Stand in Your Light. With vocalist/guitarist Daniel Änghede (also Astroqueen), pianist/vocalist Daisy Chapman, guitarist/keyboardist Jonas Stålhammar (also At the Gates), keyboardist/backing vocalist Mark Furnevall and drummer Ben Wilsker all having been in Crippled Black Phoenix — only bassist Pontus Blom would seem not to be an alumnus — this more recent project perhaps unsurprisingly digs into a deeply, richly melodic, expanded-definition-of-heavy post-rock. The songs across the 68-minute 2LP, which starts with its longest track (immediate points) in the 10:34 “Rebel Drones,” are afraid neither to be loud nor minimal, and standout moments like “Shut it Down” or the Mellotron into absolute-melody-wash of “Sanctuary” bear out that vibe as a reminder of the gorgeousness that can come from emotions normally thought negative. The promo text for this record says it, “provides balm for the wound that the split of ANATHEMA has caused,” and that’s a lofty claim from where I sit, but you know, it’s a start, and clearly a lineup capable of a certain kind of magic that they represent well here.
One doesn’t imagine it’s easy to be a new band in London at this point, with the seen-it-all-plus-we’re-all-in-like-10-bands-ourselves crowd and so many acts in and around the sphere of Desertfest, etc. — or maybe I’m way off and the community is amazing; I honestly don’t know — but Troy the Band distinguish themselves through the pendulum swing in their debut EP, The Blissful Unknown, guitars and bass both fuzzed to and beyond the gills and just a bit showy in “Michael” to give the outing a hint of strut despite its generally laid back attitude. Opener “I Wage a War” is the shortest inclusion by far on the 26-minute offering, and it’s a sprint compared to the more plodding, drone-hum-backed “Less Than Nothing,” and after “Michael” chugs and sways to its noisy finish, the title-track blows it all out to end off by underscoring the encouragingly atmospheric impression made by the songs prior, loose-sounding but not at all sloppy and occupying an expanse that comes across like it only wants to grow bigger. Here’s hoping it does exactly that. In the meantime, even in England’s green, pleasant and perpetually-full-of-riffs land, Troy the Band carve a fascinating place for themselves between various microgenres, psychedelic without being carried off by self-indulgence.
Oakland, California’s Mount Desert make an awaited full-length debut with Fear the Heart a full seven years after releasing their self-titled two-songer (review here), both cuts from which feature on the record. Hey, life happens. I get that. And if the tradeoff for not putting out two or three records in the interim is the airy float of guitar throughout and the subtle-then-not-so-subtle build in “Semper Virens,” I’ll take it. Who the hell needs more records when you can have one that speaks to your unconscious like that? In any case, Fear the Heart is striking in more than just its moments of culmination, “Blue Madonna” and “New Fire” at the outset casting a fluidity that “The River I” and “The River II” perhaps unsurprisingly further even as they find their own paths into the second half of the record. “The Wail” closes with nighttime howls only after “Fear the Heart” — one of the two from the first outing — and the aforementioned “Semper Virens” have their say in progressive guitar and weighted psychedelicraft, earthbound thanks to vocal soul and ‘them drums tho,’ and especially as a debut, and one apparently a while in the making, Mount Desert‘s first LP justifies all that hype from more than half a decade and 15 lifetimes ago. They’re a band with something to say aesthetically and in songwriting. I hope they continue to move forward.
